


A Long Night

by tielan



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-13
Updated: 2005-07-13
Packaged: 2017-10-06 18:23:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The proximity to death stirs a basic - or base - instinct for life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Long Night

In the silence of the gym, John listened to his heartbeat and let the distant sounds of night-time Atlantis flow around him, like the currents that swirled around the city.

It had been a long day. He was tired.

It was tiredness causing the illusion that he could hear the heartbeat of the woman whose forehead rested against his, her eyes closed, her breathing regular.

Foolishness, of course, his ears weren’t that sensitive.

Yet the awareness of her persisted. Under his fingers, her skin was warm and smooth; in his nostrils, the herbal aroma of her outfit offset the earthy tang of her scent; and the thick, dark lines of her lashes rested heavy against the coffee-and-cream skin.

The tension he’d felt earlier, the stress of his responsibilities to the Atlantis expedition, had drained from him with her reassurance, easing the knots in his back and shoulders. However, his proximity to Teyla was replacing it with another pressure, more personal, and just as hungry as the first.

It was tiredness that caused John to wonder what she’d taste like on his mouth, if he slid his hands up her throat to cradle her head and covered her lips with his own...

Her lashes rose and caught him in the act of staring, and she lifted her head but didn’t move from beneath his hands. “Major?”

She had to be aware of his indecision, of the hunger that trembled beneath his skin. There was no way she could avoid it, standing so close in a charged atmosphere.

“Teyla...” John stopped himself before he could say anything more, dropped his hands from her shoulders before he reached for something that might get his ass kicked. He turned away to get his bag and left her standing in the centre of the room.

He knew what was happening to him; he’d first felt it as he lifted the jumper from the edges of the trees on the planet and dialled the gate to return home. It had only intensified as he brought the puddlejumper to a standstill in the jumper bay, his gaze resting on her as hers rested on him. And he’d felt it pierce him as he watched the wormhole close behind their message.

As he turned back towards her, she was watching him with an open gaze, no dissembling, and no fear.

Her openness didn’t help the currents he felt running through his body; it only goaded him harder, and he swallowed with a dry mouth.

The proximity to death stirred basic desires in human physiology. Adrenaline found its outlet in reaction or overreaction, and sex was an automated response to the passing of danger, a way for genes to ensure they were passed on.

Atlantis was facing death now. Even if they hoped for a solution to their problem, the possibility that they wouldn’t survive was one that had to be faced. That was why they’d sent the transmission back to Earth: in the hope that, even if they didn’t survive, Earth would be warned of what was coming.

Atlantis was facing death, but John Sheppard was facing a living woman.

And right now, he _wanted_.

There was a moment when he struggled with the ferocious hunger of desire, woken by his night with Cheya, driven by the impending destruction of him and his people, and roaring through him with all the swift viciousness of wildfire.

Then he reined it in.

He liked and respected Teyla, enjoyed her company as a friend, appreciated her unusual beauty, and admired her skill and tenacity as she dealt with being the lone ‘alien’ among the Earth personnel. That was more important than any age-old genetic imperative to pass on his traits to another generation.

But he had a feeling his hand would be getting a small workout before he slept tonight.

John indicated the door. He wouldn’t make a move, wouldn’t lay a finger on her that she didn’t first permit. Firstly, he didn’t want his ass kicked. Secondly, she had the right to choose whether she wanted him or not.

Considering that she turned to leave the room, it seemed that she didn’t want him.

He stifled the disappointment that thrust through him, ripping through his gut like a cold, clawed fist.

_What else do you want from me?_

Not enough.

She glanced back at him once before preceding him through the corridors on silent, bare feet. John had always been aware of the feline grace of her; now he was doubly conscious of the sway of her hips, the line of her shoulders, the curve of her spine.

His hand would _definitely_ be getting a workout before the end of the night. God, he could feel the gentle tension that preceded a hard-on even now, just following behind her.

They moved through corridors busy by day, now silent in night, casting few shadows, making little noise. Atlantis had a hushed quality to it in the night, but John could feel the hum of the city in his blood, in his bones.

Or maybe that was just the hypertension of desire, thrumming beneath his skin.

Somewhere during their journey through the rooms, he’d stopped paying attention. He walked into her as she paused at an intersection, her head poised to listen to something that her senses had picked up.

There was a moment of confusion in his senses as skin touched skin, as the back of her hand touched his jaw in a gesture for silence. Then John caught the wariness of her stance and stretched his hearing beyond the pulse of blood in his temples.

He heard nothing. After a moment, she shook her head as though to clear it of something and kept going.

It took him a second or two to follow her, distracted by the seconds when her fingers had rested against his lips. “Teyla?”

“I thought I heard something,” she said, her voice low as she glanced over her shoulder at him.

He turned, staring back at the empty corridor behind him, then jogged to catch up. “You thought?”

“We have been without sleep for many hours. When taxed to its limit, the mind may imagine things that are not so.”

_Tell me about it._

At her quarters, she turned to give him her customary smile, faint and enigmatic, and then lifted her hands to his shoulders for her bowed-head routine.

He stiffened at shoulder and groin, and told himself that they were colleagues and he could do this.

John touched his hands to her shoulders. He tried not to let his fingertips slide across the smooth, dark skin. He tried to remind himself that this was a gesture of respect and friendship and knew he was kidding himself when he looked down into her eyes.

All platonic thought fled for the exit vectors as she lifted her mouth to his, and brushed her lips across his skin. His fingers involuntarily tightened on her shoulders, and he leaned into the kiss.

He was in no mood to be gentle.

Fire coursed through him, fingers slipped into her hair and clenched, and his body pressed against her, flesh separated from flesh by nothing more than a few thin coverings. She pressed back, responding to his ferocity, and her mouth moved against him with dizzying intensity. Teyla didn’t need gentle treatment - John sensed that she wouldn’t have accepted tenderness from him.

They stumbled into her quarters, and someone hit the doorpad to make it close. Her hands were under his shirt, running over his belly and chest. They broke lips for a second as they hauled his shirt over his head, but his mouth was back on hers as soon as the collar was clear of his head.

Her skin tasted of spice as he moved his mouth over her jaw and down her throat, and she obligingly lifted her chin to give him greater access to her throat, as his hands skimmed down over the curves of her body, so distinct and different from his own.

Cheya had been a seduction, a dance of circling intimacy, closer and closer until there was nowhere to go but to each other. This was possession in the most raw, potent form of sexual give-and-take, one step further in the dance they performed when they were stave-fighting against each other.

John trusted no-one with his body so much as Teyla - wasn’t that why he allowed her to fight him, no holds barred?

This was just one more aspect of that trust.

His fingers slipped up the slit in her skirt as they eased onto the bed, still clothed, but too hungry for taste and touch and scent to be worried about that, yet. He tugged down the material of her panties, and she spoke his name.

“John.”

She’d never yet called him by name and something in him froze and cursed. He lifted his mouth from her throat and dared himself to look her in the eye.

What he saw was open desire, her own plain assurance that she desired him and her acknowledgement of its return in him. In the eyes of another woman - a human woman - there would have been unspoken questions of love and stability, certainty and assurance.

Not in hers.

“Teyla.” There were a lot of things he wanted to ask; a lot of things he wanted to know; but there was no time for any of it. No time for anything but this night of pleasure and release amidst the pressure and fear facing Atlantis.

And the lurking fear he held inside him was that he might ask more of her than she was willing to give. This wasn’t love - not yet.

Did he want it to be? He didn’t have time for such complications now. Not with Atlantis in the balance.

_What I want from you might be too much._

She touched his mouth, dark fingers illuminated by the dim light of the moon outside. “As much as this is will be sufficient,” she said, her voice nothing more than a thread of sound in the stillness of the city. “No more, no less, warrior to warrior.”

Too much and not enough.

John suspected it was all he would get. “It’s enough,” he said, affirming her words. They’d sort out the finer details tomorrow - or whenever it was that they had time. Later.

As he leaned forward to take her mouth again, and his fingers worked to untie the lacings in the back of her bodice, John figured it would be _much_ later.

He hauled the bodice away as she pulled him down, rolling them over in her furs, so his hands were full of her flesh and her hair swung down over her shoulders.

It had been a long day with too many unpleasant surprises.

And, in spite of their exhaustion, it was a long night.

\- **fin** -

 


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